The animal rights activist group Direct Action Everywhere held their May Day of action in downtown San Francisco on Saturday May23rd. The activists traveled from cities in the US, Canada and even Denmark, to once again bring their “It’s Not Food It’s Violence” campaign to the streets of San Francisco.

A group called Direct Action Everywhere held a flash mob inside the Whole Foods store on Market Street in SF on Sunday January 11th to protest that companies inhumane or cruel treatment of animals. This report contains photos and video of the flash mob.

On August 17th, opening night of the Ringling Brothers Circus in San Jose, nearly a hundred activists gathered to protest and to inform circus-goers about the cruelty involved when wild animals are forced to live in small cages and perform for audiences across the country. In the first video here, Pat Cuviello of Humanity Through Education discusses the history of demonstrations for circus animals in Northern California. In the second video, Deniz Bolbol of Humanity Through Education discus...

(video 9:07)
Deniz Bolbol watches the Ringling elephants over a wall with the use of a videocamera on the end of a pole. She remarks that the elephants appear beaten down in the way they respond to their handlers. In 2004, Deniz Bolbol recorded a Ringling handler stabbing and jabbing a 7-year-old chained elephant named Angelica outside of the Oakland Arena as Ringling walked Angelica to the venue to perform. The footage received extensive news coverage. Ringling responded the following year by arresting Deniz for trespassing when she tried to videorecord from the same location, leading to the Oakland civil suit and Deniz winning the right to record outside of the arena. Now, however, Ringling no longer walks the elephants back and forth three times during each show but keeps the elephants within the perimeter wall the entire time. Additionally, at the San Jose show, Ringling shined a strobe light at one of the cameras attempting to record over the wall.
Deniz says that the animals are just commodities to Ringling as they are shuffled from city to city all year except for a few weeks during the winter. Ringling has been documented repeatedly beating their elephants and chaining them for extended periods of time. Some elephants have been forced to perform in service of Ringling's profits for decades. One such elephant named Sarah who collapsed while being loaded into a boxcar in Anaheim on August 6th has been forced to perform for Ringling for 50 years, including in the show that night in San Jose.
Deniz discusses how Ringling coopts the corporate media in towns to which the circus travels, in order to guarantee that coverage of the circus is positive and doesn't mention the presence of protesters or tales of animal abuse. In San Jose for instance, NBC-11 sent a news van out to do a story on opening night at the circus, but neglected to talk with anyone associated with the demonstration, much less even mention that a huge number of people were present protesting. The reason? NBC was an official sponsor of the circus and the station's weatherperson, Christina Loren, was an honorary master of ceremony and ringmaster for the Ringling show in San Jose.
http://www.idausa.org

Producer Casey Suchan, lead actor/composer Joaquin Pastor, and director Denis Hennelly were interviewed about their new film "Bold Native" on November 20th, 2010, just after Joaquin's three-piece band performed at the Saturn Cafe in Berkeley.

Ever wonder how vegetarianism began? Who were the first vegetarians? Did you know that during the middle ages, the Pope ordered monks to be vegetarian? Did you know the first vegetarian "health nut" was born in 1467 and lived to be 100 years old? When was the first advertisement for non-leather shoes? Did you guess 1851? Do you know what German vegetarian societies did during the Nazi period, when they were forced to either join the Nazi party or disband? How well do you know your vegetarian...

Besides failing to take any action defending the senseless slaughter of 23,000 dolphins, Sea World fires off fireworks seven days a week. Sea World San Diego is adjacent to the San Diego River, a wildlife area that is disturbed nightly in the summer at 9:50. Hear the wildlife fleeing in the background noise.